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Monthly Archives: April 2011

First there was the man who looked like he could play my father in a movie. He didn’t look like my dad, but if I were in a movie they would cast this white haired jewfroed hippie with the sensible sneakers and the monochromatic windbreaker on as my dad. Next to him was the hardcore Irishman. Tattoos were on his knuckles, but if it were possible, I’m sure tattoos would be on his heart. Two brothers sat next to him. They cared for each other ~ They would die for each other -: I’m pretty sure one was mentally handicapped. They were hugging now, but you could tell they have a history of fighting when times get tough. But when times aren’t tough, they love each other better than other people do. Next bench down, communicating off and on with the larger group were two broskies – one black, one white: handshaking and laughing at how they were so awesome. Everyone enjoyed their presence too. Every once in a while this group of joyous public park patrons was visited by a middle aged black woman getting off her job that involved a bag that was close to being a briefcase and an unstable 35 year old conspiracy theorist.

The last one I worked at was populated by four people named John, Mike, Greg, and John and I still maintain that that was the best joke I never wrote. Two and a half hours after I started working I finished working and I exited into the joy that is the first beautiful day of the year. I love that day where it first gets warm and people go out and smile as they enjoy weather and life. I went to a dark movie theater and sat alone as I watched Battle: Los Angeles while eating my leftover vegan sampler that I snuck in via a plastic bag I got from a bodega.

It was the second day in a row that I worked in an office. This time my day had extended to four hours. I hadn’t eaten lunch, but having just found out that my bank account was significantly in the red, I attempted to postpone what my stomach was growling at me to not postpone. It was raining and I had to pee. Ready to continue the being a part of the warm weather, I had worn a light shirt with no hat or umbrella, so I ducked out of the rain and into a bar. There I could use the bathroom. Two birds, one stone. The bartender grumpily told me where I could urinate. There were two people at the bar: A woman doing her taxes while she was in a suit and a man with an eyepatch. It was very silly.

Battle: Los Angeles was very silly. I just wanted a safe place to eat my constantly cooling quinoa and kale. I wanted a safe place to make up alliterations about leftovers that only quite make sense. A movie about how important military spending is was not the safe place for me to do the “elitist” things that the Right wants me to feel self conscious about.

The bathroom didn’t lock, barely even closed. Then I looked around me and was confused as to how this bathroom should be used. Despite no sink, there were three toilets. Two were urinals. There was no stall around the sit down toilet and the room was far too small to share with a shitter. As I tried to choose a urinal, I loud hammering began three feet above my head and chards of ceiling started falling into the urinal.

When I had entered the movie theater I was greeted by a man who wanted to see some other movie. I would tell you the movie, but I couldn’t understand what he said when he drunkenly yell-mumbled his intentions at me.

The hammering continued. I think there was a man in the ceiling banging on a metal pipe with a metal pipe.

They are the only two tangible embodiments of emotion we display. The rest is all people inferring. They are the only two that are obvious and guttural. That you can’t stop even if you try. I stopped doing theater because I wasn’t causing enough people to cry or laugh. Because people kept telling me that that wasn’t the point. That you could just think. But I didn’t want the audience to passively be approached and asked: “hey, do you mind thinking, now?” No. I wanted to throat fuck them with things they didn’t want to deal with. Actively demand that they react.

I like writing entries where I do the opposite of what I’m saying is good.

When I was little I used to get these pains in my side every couple of months to a year. I would be thinking at the time; “Man, I really have to pee.” And my kidneys would feel like they seized up and my body would turn a paler shade of white and my mouth would start salivating large balls of drool for my body to deal with swallowing. I would pee, then find a place to lay down and within an hour or two I’d be fine. The doctors never found out what was wrong with me. They speculated that possibly I had “kidney pebbles.” “Kidney Pebbles” was the cute, tongue-in-cheek, name that they came up with for my distress.

It’s Saturday night in Brooklyn. It’s about five minutes ago. The sounds of people excited for the weekend surround and infiltrate my space because the walls separating my space from their’s only obstruct the visions of what are on the other side and not the sounds. I work most on the weekends. I closed shop today and will open shop tomorrow. I party on Tuesdays.

Every bus ride was scary for me. Every bus ride meant that I would have to hold my bladder closed for a very long time. Nobody takes bus-rides for short amounts of time. On multiple occasions I had made the entire bus pull over on the side of the highway so that I could pee in the bush on the side of the road. They always told me that what they were doing was “very unsafe.” We were in Maine. In Maine there are barely any cars on the highway. There is never enough traffic for pulling over to be “very unsafe.” We were very safe. And we didn’t have pee sloshing around on the floor of the school bus, so that’s good too.

My roommate was in the shower. I hadn’t thought of it at the time, but now I realized I had to pee. I realzed that because I had opened my window and was on the verge of opening my fly. There is a padlock, a gate and a window to get through before I can crawl out onto my fire escape. I did all the tasks, shaking wildly below the waste because now the pee wants to come out.

I had to pee so badly, but I was embarrassed. People would hate me if I admitted I had drank liquids earlier that day, right? I sat down on the bench of the mini-golf course and could hold my embarrassment any longer. I peed, left to change clothes, and did not acknowledge that the first had happened. Obviously I had saved myself from embarrassment.

With toes dangling off the edge of the fire-escape, I let fly a golden stream of my extended manhood unraveling its way all the way down three stories of a building to the ground. I felt relief in a way I hadn’t thought possible since the last time I peed. Fear of pain had led to a fear of embarrassment, had led to shame. None of those emotions are fun, so I won’t have them. I will have relief instead – this involves peeing all the time, anywhere.

My friend once pushed me against the wall when I tried to pee on the library because it was the closest building.